Temperatures on Mercury can reach 800 degrees Fahrenheit (427 degrees Celsius), but around the north pole, in areas permanently shielded from the sun's heat, NASA's Messenger spacecraft found a mix of frozen water and possible organic materials.

The find is so enticing that NASA will direct Messenger's observation toward that area in the coming months — when the angle of the sun allows — to get a better look, said Gregory Neumann, a Messenger instrument scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

"Temperatures on Mercury can reach 800 degrees Fahrenheit (427 degrees Celsius), but around the north pole, in areas permanently shielded from the sun's heat, NASA's Messenger spacecraft found a mix of frozen water and possible organic materials."

anybody know if mercury is closer or farther away than mars? also if mercury has water how about venus?

Quoting: Anonymous Coward 19156676

closer. don't know about venus. have we looked at the poles there?

Quoting: tarfonwxx

From wikipedie [link to en.wikipedia.org] Despite the harsh conditions on the surface, the atmospheric pressure and temperature at about 50 km to 65 km above the surface of the planet is nearly the same as that of the Earth, making its upper atmosphere the most Earth-like area in the Solar System, even more so than the surface of Mars. Due to the similarity in pressure and temperature and the fact that breathable air (21% oxygen, 78% nitrogen) is a lifting gas on Venus in the same way that helium is a lifting gas on Earth, the upper atmosphere has been proposed as a location for both exploration and colonization

This mercury news has excited me to know end! I'm ready to hear the news from curiosity when NASA announces it.

The discovery of water-ice on Mercury is very significant. Water has been linked to life of all kinds, and given the discovery of unusual life forms located in diverse places deep in the ocean, or bacteria that like extremely hot environments like thermophiles, or ones that can live without oxygen (anaerobic) bacteria, or ones that can live in normally toxic salty water (halophiles), or methanogens that live in methane, some live in hot springs, etc. "Some microbes, fungi, and live in very harsh environoments are these are called archaea". [link to www.agu.org] [link to staff.fcps.net]

Now which viruses are not life forms, they're more like nanorobots in truth that insert their genetic code into higher life forms to replicate. They've been found in the frozen seas and in incredibly diverse ways.

The discovery means that life could potentially exist on other planets. It's a monumental discovery, and one that should make people hopeful.

To bad we will all be dead and broke before NASA actually tells the truth about anything space related. So is this the big announcement we where suppose to be told? Water on mercury? Does not move me and nothing NASA has done to justify wasted tax dollars. A few rovers on mars and still NASA can't tell us SHIT! Why did they put that VW in a crater it might not crawl out of instead of Cydonia? Fuckers.